Growing and learning how to be a human doing is a practice. Today Suzi is super excited to have Kristian King, from Higher Ground, joining her today to talk about being congruent and authentic in the effort of bringing your thoughts, feelings and actions together as a unit.
Kristian King has been a practicing Recreational Therapist for the past 9 years and a Veteran and First Responder Program Manager with Higher Ground USA. Higher Ground USA provides free recreational therapy week-long programs to veterans, first responders, and their significant others ranging from climbing, scuba, surfing, rafting, skiing, mountaineering, and cycling. Kristian also works with teens in recovery at Paradigm Treatment Centers in Malibu, CA as a Clinical Assistant. Paradigm is an intensive residential treatment program that integrates the whole person, a sense of community, and family.
Kristian is currently working on his graduate degree in Clinical Psychology focusing on somatic psychotherapy and trauma-informed care. Life balance is important to Kristian, so he intentionally carves out time to BE through date nights with his girlfriend and friends, meditating, yoga, traveling, working out, cooking, photographing, skiing, surfing, and climbing.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Growing and learning how to be a human doing is a practice. Today Suzi is super excited to have Kristian King, from Higher Ground, joining her today to talk about being congruent and authentic in the effort of bringing your thoughts, feelings and actions together as a unit.
Kristian King has been a practicing Recreational Therapist for the past 9 years and a Veteran and First Responder Program Manager with Higher Ground USA. Higher Ground USA provides free recreational therapy week-long programs to veterans, first responders, and their significant others ranging from climbing, scuba, surfing, rafting, skiing, mountaineering, and cycling. Kristian also works with teens in recovery at Paradigm Treatment Centers in Malibu, CA as a Clinical Assistant. Paradigm is an intensive residential treatment program that integrates the whole person, a sense of community, and family.
Kristian is currently working on his graduate degree in Clinical Psychology focusing on somatic psychotherapy and trauma-informed care. Life balance is important to Kristian, so he intentionally carves out time to BE through date nights with his girlfriend and friends, meditating, yoga, traveling, working out, cooking, photographing, skiing, surfing, and climbing.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
I'm Susie Landolfi and welcome to Be Crazy Well, so I couldn't think of anybody more wonderful to talk to than you, chris. I'm all excited. I like actually sweating because I'm so excited to do it, and I've always said you look like what Brad Pitt should have looked like when he was younger. He's pretty cute.
Speaker 1:I don't know. He was pretty cute back in his day.
Speaker 2:He was pretty cute and you just upped the quotient the Brad Pitt quotient for me, so, and I couldn't think of anybody who's more. Well, crazy, well, you were definitely crazy. Well, wait, someone's at my door. Look at this. Oh, I just want to show you. Come in here, ronnie. So I just want to show you that I have somebody that brings me. What is this Cappuccino? This is a cappuccino, homemade cappuccino by my houseboy. Who's this? This is Chris, chris.
Speaker 1:We love a houseboy that brings cappuccino.
Speaker 2:This is how my zooms roll that someone delivers me Like thank you, ronnie, he's actually. He's my son-in-law, actually, and I adore him.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's him, that's him.
Speaker 2:I was actually, I'm still waiting.
Speaker 1:I'm still waiting for my, for my, for my cappuccino.
Speaker 2:It's so good. You're still waiting for yours. Okay, I'll brief, I'll send him over. He's really good. Okay, he's an amazing contractor, carpenter, general contractor, all of this and all around wonderful man, and so I'm so grateful that they let me stay in the guest suite.
Speaker 1:He's the good. He's the good. He sounds like he's the go-to man.
Speaker 2:He's the go-to man. He's the go-to man. So while I'm drinking my homemade latte, that he made me crazy. Well, you are like if I did a Wikipedia thing on crazy, well, what it means, the definition, I put your picture there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. I think it's an ongoing process.
Speaker 2:Well, you're the only one that would say oh my God, thank you. That's a compliment, right. That shows how crazy Well you are. I want to tell everybody about how we met like, and then start to share the process of why we're talking, that you get to decide.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how we met and in the process of how we got to where we are, how much time did you have?
Speaker 2:Oh, I will do two sessions, though who knows?
Speaker 1:We met. So I was living on the East side, I had just separated from my wife. It was an amicable separation, and then COVID hit, like the weekends that we were kind of in the midst of physically separating and she wasn't able to get an apartment. And so, obviously, with our amicable separation and COVID, it lent us to being in the same space. So she moved into my place. We both really loved animals and, through COVID, kind of just finding ways to get out, finding ways to connect with nature, and I had come across the animal sanctuary up in Malibu known as Big Heart, which you were very associated with at that time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was the founder. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And you were the founder and so reached out to you, wanted to come up and do a visit and fell in love with it. And I think through that process, as I mentioned, there was a lot of transitional periods happening. There was COVID happening, there was a separation happening, there was also the process of me coming into myself during that time as well. So just a really big transitional period, for I think a lot of people, and just myself in general, fell in love with that area.
Speaker 1:I mean, how can you not fall in love with animals and animal sanctuary, y'all's energy that you brought to that space, but then also being across from the ocean? So I thrown around my idea of wanting to do like van life, you know, a camper life, what have you? And I know Kiersha, your daughter, had brought up the point of like well, why don't you just do it? Like we have plugins, like why don't you just come up here, we'll work on the sanctuary? And I was like, is that an option? And then that's where it all unfolded. I met you and I went through your hip high training, which I'm extremely grateful for, and I hope to put that into practice sooner rather than later. But that's how we met. At least that's my iteration of how we met Right, and it's mine too.
Speaker 2:I remember you walking up the path from the parking lot up to me and I'm going who's that? It looks like Brad Pitt, anyway. So we high in hip is horse inspired growth and healing, and hip is horse inspired psychotherapy. And you're right, I was doing that. I had been doing that for a long time, and what I noticed about you was not only your energy how the animals responded to you was remarkable. So you walk this earth without much of an agenda, if almost none at times.
Speaker 1:Do you know?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 1:I'm starting to believe that Okay.
Speaker 2:So feedback will give you the best right. So not just your thoughts and your feelings. But you know I'm the therapist. I don't care shit about how you think, I don't give a shit about how you feel, like how you walk this earth, what you do, right. So when I saw how the horses and the animals the pigs, the chickens, the llama, the alpaca, all of the animals that were there responded to you, and then I saw how the people responded to you, I said there is something so different about this man in so many levels, this idea that you walk the earth differently, without a lot of agenda, in a culture that has nothing but agenda, when there are human doings as opposed to human beings. And then you shared with me about higher ground. Now, first of all, great title, right, so I know about higher power and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:higher ground, stepping on a higher ground, living in a higher ground and, metaphorically, to me that means living according to principles, not your personal. If you want to be part of a higher ground and grounding, you have to do that according to principles, not your personality. So share with me and everybody here about higher ground and how you got there, and because you're still there and then you're starting a whole new adventure, which I hope that we'll come back together again, spending more time together because of that new adventure. So tell us about higher ground.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, ben, how much time do you have Higher ground? It's special how you've alluded to it is it's based off of tapping into yourself, tapping into nature, tapping into play and fun. The organization started in Sun Valley, idaho, so it was the first destination ski resort in the nation. Really fun small town Getting a little bit more known now, especially since the pandemic. So it started off in 99 as an adaptive organization for kids and adults in the valley area that wouldn't otherwise be able to get out and recreate. So those with MS, cp, cerebral palsy, down syndrome, those on the spectrum, and there's also the Idaho school, the deaf and the blind that they have a contract with. So just kiddos just ripping, that can't hear, can't see, going on like black diamonds. So that's just special in itself. In 99, when I don't think there was a lot of recreation and opportunities for those that are differently abled, especially since the ADA was like kind of more established in the 80s, so very new for its period of time.
Speaker 1:And then in 05, one of our board members, chris Boskin, who actually her husband, was the economic advisor to George Bush when he was in office, jr. They live up in Northern California, very philanthropic couple. They happen to have a place in Sun Valley was skiing out with some of their friends that had served in Vietnam and the folks that they were out skiing with that she specifically was out skiing with had just mentioned like how freeing and how liberating the experience of just skiing and being out in nature and being with other people that just kind of like get them or at least want to understand them was, and so she brought it to higher ground. She was one of the board members at the time and, again, this was just for adaptive folks, differently abled. I was like, hey, what if we do like a week long program with these veterans and maybe there's significant others or some unimportant in their community? And they were like, oh, this might be a good idea.
Speaker 1:And now we're in 2023, going in 2024, and we run 28 of these week long programs for veterans and there's significant others. We run singles and couples programs, but it's not just skiing and that's really the fun part, and it's also not just in Sun Valley, idaho. So we run programs in New Hampshire, florida, texas, washington, oregon, idaho, california, and they all range from scuba diving, climbing, mountaineering, kayaking, surfing, you name it. We pretty much do it. If you have any other ideas. We also do a question. We did a program with you up at your place up in Caliente lifesavers. So we're always wanting to expand and with that expansion actually in the past year and a half we've brought in our scope to first responders. Actually had an amazing conversation with two first responders or firefighters that were in Pete's coffee the other day when I was doing class and got a hold of their rep. So hopefully we're going to be getting some LA County folks out to our programs.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So what's so wonderful about? Many people know that I was part of the designers of the curriculum of Warrior Path, which came from Boulder.
Speaker 1:Press.
Speaker 2:They also to now have expanded to first responders and we did a first responder. So I'm so grateful when organizations like Higher Ground see something and then expand it. Like, how do you say no to somebody? If it's working for here and these kids, then how about expanding to the adults? How about expanding to how anybody becomes differently abled or go through something? So there's physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and even financial trauma that people go through and one of the first things I noticed that people give up when they go through trauma is that ability to have fun. They can't. It's almost like impossible to find that part of you again and so oftentimes, like a car, we need to jumpstart. We need to be able to go somewhere where someone gives us permission and also explains to us. That's exactly how we learned when we were kids. Is we recreated? We created ourselves through play and through physical activity.
Speaker 1:So here, that's what I love so much. Right, there is just like the permission and the invitation to do that and that's what I love about our programs and the recreating like you just mentioned is like to be a kid and tap into that. We don't allow or even give ourselves space for that. That's what I love about recreational therapy Like that's our modality. We do definitely have mental health professionals on our programs, but recreational therapy is our modality and so it is that way of being able to identify those five domains of our life, including financial, throughout our programs and hopefully just being that kickstart for folks to be able to incorporate that when they go home is like the biggest reward for me is like hearing people like mention what they're doing after our programs.
Speaker 2:And it's the first way we all learned. It is the way that children learn and move into adulthood is through experiential, recreating that idea. And then what we've done is we started to live from here here, like this is the most important part of you is your brain and what you do from here to here and the hell with all the rest of it down here. So this idea, that's what therapy does. Unfortunately, we're sitting in an office. Come on, get out of the frigging office and go out with the people that you're working with in order to get the body involved. So what higher ground did? And I was one of those mental health professionals that went on two of your trips I went on the water sports and I went on the rock climbing, and the other day my my feed came up with me dancing on the rock with one of the right, I remember that.
Speaker 2:You know, doing the, the dance on the rock, because I can't right, no, I wouldn't, I do that. And so this idea and I just want to say this to people, because what higher ground has done is proven once again, and we have to keep proving it, apparently over and over and over again that you get to the mind and the emotions through the body. That's how you get there, that's how you change, that's how you grow, that's how you heal by doing different, to be different. You want to be different. You have to go through the body and then the mind may change or may not.
Speaker 2:I still have thoughts and feelings here. I still have some people I'd like to throw in cement, because I am half Italian. Like you know, you come out as an Italian kid and you just know how to make cement. It's like one of those amazing things. And so the point being is that I just want to say that so many times, people looking for something, let's build something up, even Warrior Path, we were at least smart enough to put in all this recreation every day, like we at least put some activity in there in that curriculum, knowing that we could reach people and nevermind the connection that you make when you're playing with people.
Speaker 1:I should be decorating.
Speaker 2:I should probably say it that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's opening those neural pathways to different ways of firing your brain and learning things and hopefully it does lend itself to changing some of the behaviors or at least the thoughts around the behaviors, and that's you know. I know you know that I'm in school, but it's, the whole somatic psychotherapy route is like my jam. It's like why sit in four walls and talk with someone? I mean, I think again, different modalities are good for other people in different times in their life and their journey, but there's just something about getting someone outside and doing something that they enjoy and processing along with that. Just it does something. I know I'm pretty sure you'll require it, but Well, it's so funny to me.
Speaker 2:I understand the medical model, you know, I get it. I understand why a room, I understand all of it and what always. So one of the modalities is EMDR, where you literally process trauma to go through both sides of your brain and you do it through looking at a finger or tapping whatever it is, and that was discovered by the psychotherapist that discovered that was out on a walk. It was out on a walk, it wasn't sitting.
Speaker 1:And you know, what's so funny is that every time we have our Tuesday meetings or Thursday meetings, I'm out on a walk and they're like, oh, there's Chris out on his walk again and I'm like, yeah, I'm like I don't process things, just sitting and staring at a screen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, as almost I wanted to ask, I wanna walk while we're doing this. It's just sort of too hard at times, and it's you know and. I make everybody you know throw up if I'm moving too much in my carry-on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 2:So we kept this connection going and I brought you into the Heart Ranch or Kyrsha did actually, you brought me into higher ground, and now many of the veterans that we work with and have members at MVP. So then we had this wonderful and still have this symbiotic relationship where we can use higher ground and it's the top of our list for a resource, and so that was really important. Now I get an email from you months ago saying hey, susie, I think I'm going to apply and I'm gonna let you finish the sentence while I drink my lovely latte.
Speaker 1:What are you?
Speaker 2:doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I applied to Antioch five years not too late because I know everything comes around. But I applied to Antioch's master in clinical psychology and I'm gonna be doing the emphasis around somatic psychotherapy and trauma-informed care, and I know that's your arm of moderate.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I was the at the time. I do believe I was the oldest student there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Never too old.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, and they also didn't have. They didn't have a student organization. We had no student representation there, which was so bizarre because Antioch is so part of a progressive educational movement. So I also started that so that we could go and tell the administration what we'd like for a graduation, our graduation that we're paying for. That was a fun moment. And yet they have been such a great progressive way of looking at mental health on a continuum that this idea that it is part of the medical model. The difference is that if you go in right now for a knee surgery, they'll probably do a microscopic surgery where they can just go in with little tubes. They don't have to always do such a big surgery because it keeps progressing, whereas mental health, if we're not careful, the book that we're supposed to use to decide what diagnosis you have changes every 10 years. I mean, I just want to think right. I ask everybody would you like the phone you had 10 years ago?
Speaker 1:Right, so what I love-. It's true, I mean, I think about the. Yeah, I think to like the ACL surgery I had in 08 versus 13 was vastly different.
Speaker 2:So different. So the only problem with the clinical work that we do the mental health work under the medical model is, and why it's so important for people like you to be coming into this field is it's hypocritical at best Meaning I can tell you to quit smoking, quit drinking and lose 100 pounds. I can do that. I can do that. I can do that and I can go home and smoke a carton of cigarettes, drink a gallon of wine, need an old cheesecake myself. I can do that. So right, and I decided when I became a part of this healing modality was that I wasn't going to do that. If I was going to ask people to change and do things, then I was going to make sure I'm doing them too. That I could not be part of the hypocrisy of it or the hypocritical model. If you really want to hypocritical, then you shouldn't be hypocritical like there's a different From the South.
Speaker 1:Right, practice what you preach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, that's exactly right Practice what you preach, that idea, and of course, we're struggling with that as obviously as a world right now a terrible. So I get excited when people like you decide to do this because this new generation, you're not going to put up with that. You're not going to put up with that, right.
Speaker 1:So there's I would say even the generations after me. I mean, I get put in check by the kiddos that I work with at treatment, constantly checking me. They're like, chris, that's not okay. And I'm like oh, here you are. I'm like, can you tell me why? I want to better understand and I don't get the answer. Because I said so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So what's exciting about your journey and what I, from the time you walked up that hill up to Big Heart Ranch and to now, is watching and, at times, participating in your decisions to become more authentic, to become congruent, as we like to say, where your thoughts, your feelings, your actions are one and going full circle.
Speaker 2:That's why the animals always trusted you. It's because you didn't walk in there with an agenda. You didn't walk in there pretending that you were something you were not, or feeling something or hiding something. You were feeling or thinking Like. You went in there as you. And I tell people all the time people that have that way with animals it's because there were times that people were not honest with them, that people can be hurtful and dangerous when they betray us and when they're not truthful.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I mean honestly, it always prevails, you know, and it's, I think, um, how you were mentioning is just living that world is like recognizing that we are nothing but everything at once, you know, and just um, being authentic to ourselves. I feel like a lot of people end up spending a lot of their later adult years undoing the wiring that was that was made, and I think you know you had said something very profound. To me that's really stuck and I often revisit it is that you know a lot of what we think about ourselves was either said or done to us. Um, yep, and just that saying right there just relinquished so much within me in that moment when that was shared. And yeah, it is that world of lying to yourself, trying to pretend like you're something that you're not, having other people trying to control you and many facets of at least my life Relinquishing that and relinquishing it around animals and just letting, letting be. You said you know humans doing instead of human being. Our world could benefit from a lot more of that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The funny thing is that once we are in the moment, being more authentic, what does happen is better, so the doing actually becomes safer. It becomes more.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I love so much about the horses when we were with the wild mustangs and the round pins and gentling not breaking, which I always mentioned to my friends. Now I'm like, if you hear the word breaking, turn and walk around like the opposite way. But that concept of putting a little pressure on a little pressure, on a little pressure on a little pressure, and how you're saying that just lends to more connection and lends to more safety. It's almost kind of that saying of like to have without holding. You know, having your hands open and letting the bird come and land on your hands.
Speaker 1:It's a really pretty bird and you really love birds, but you want to stay a little longer. You can't hold on to it because that bird is going to want to like escape, right, so you just let it come and go as it wants. And that was just something such as like so beautiful to have learned from you and just like that ongoing openness of like allowing that in Instead of being always so skeptical like what does someone want from me? What are they? What are they trying to get? What do they want to do? I think you get better with that practice.
Speaker 2:I think that's everything to me is practice. We forget about that and yet we use the word all the time. We have yoga practice, medical practice, law practice, right, football practice. I mean you think about it. We have that word all the time because we do understand that the better I practice, if I'm practice according to principles, I will get better at what I practice. I think that we don't see it as the verb, we see it as part of the noun legal practice, right, as opposed to know you're supposed to practice the legal ethics or the legal laws and ways of being. So for me it's kind of like the word love. I tell people all the time, like when I ask people what are the three primary emotions, what always comes up? Anger always comes up as one and love always comes Right.
Speaker 2:And I said you know, when I was in English class, going through school, they had to teach us how to create a sentence. So you, you'll either have a phrase or you'll have a sentence, depending on one thing that you add or don't add. It's called a verb, because if you don't add a verb, you have a phrase. It's like, you know, to the market, that's it Okay. So when I thought about that, I thought, okay, you need a subject, you need an object, you need a verb. So then I thought of the most important sentence we say in our lives is I love you.
Speaker 2:Use the subject. I is the subject, you is the object. Love is a verb. Love is a verb, it's not an emotion. That was the action. Yeah, it's an action. It's like I care for you, I respect you. Right, I won't lie to you. I put in any other verbs in there or I'll always tell you the truth. Put other verbs in there, that is the definition of that verb. Love, and the emotion that you get from loving or being loved is joy. That's what you get.
Speaker 1:So speak to me, and how do you and how and how do you say I think it was another one that you said enjoy.
Speaker 2:Enjoy, so I spell it. I'm always disrupting. I can't help myself.
Speaker 1:So I enjoy.
Speaker 2:Everything is passive, like the way we talk entertainment, enjoy, empowerment or empowerment, you know. And so I thought, well, if I'm supposed to enjoy something and I remember having a degree in theater and then going to a play and I'm in the audience and I enjoyed it I also remember when I was in the play, I enjoyed it, I was in joy, so process of it, yeah, so I was actually in it. So it's the same. So that brings us back to higher ground again and recreational modality, in that what we're saying is we're not bringing you to the mountain to watch people, to enjoy watching people, or bringing you to the horses so you can enjoy and watching the horses, so we're putting you in the joy in it. Right and the same with empowerment as opposed to empowerment. I cannot empower you because you already have empowerment and empower in you. So our language at times has to be thought through a little bit. More about a lot more about what we're saying and what we're encouraging. There's another one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of them.
Speaker 1:The courage within, right the courage so yeah, that's the thing is the power words. You know the phrases that we even tell ourselves. That's, you know, one of the themes for our days is I am enough. It's like, what is, what is your inside narrative, what's your inner dialogue? Like, what are you telling yourself? And I think some people actually take a step back and are like, oh, wow, like I would never say these things to, like my kids or my mom or, you know, like I would never say it to my five year old self.
Speaker 1:And it's just, you can see those moments happening in people's eyes, like the same with being on a, like you know, blue run. So, you know, for folks it's like, you know, it goes green, like bunny hill, green, blue, black and then double black. And you know, you can see when people, you can see it in their face, like when they are pushing out of their comfort zone and going into that growth and like kind of embracing it, and then they come back to their comfort, like you know, they'll stop and they'll go back down. They'll be, you know, do a few more yards of a run and then they'll stop, you know, and it's just that beautiful moment of that growth because you can tell that it's happening. You can tell that it's happening in their body, it's happening in their mind, it's happening in their thoughts and again, I mean that's just. I mean that's why I've been with higher ground for seven years now and I don't really plan on leaving anytime soon. It's just beautiful, like what we are able to present for folks, especially being in on the fall.
Speaker 2:So you've just started school. I think you're in your second or third week or something. Where are you now?
Speaker 1:I just finished my fourth week.
Speaker 2:Fourth week, okay, yep, and doing some work at a treatment center. We don't have to give the name or the name of the kids, but you're working with teenagers in Malibu and you're working there right now. So the question is what are they teaching you? What have you learned so far with these amazing youth?
Speaker 1:So many things. They touch my pain points, that's for sure, and I didn't realize that working with adults, in my perspective, is a lot easier than working with teens, and I say that maybe because I've been out of practice, you know. I think I had shared with you that I worked wilderness therapy for a little while and I thoroughly enjoyed that. But I've been working with adults for over seven years now and one of my coworkers at our staff retreat, justin Rujowicz, also veteran on our team at higher ground, he is in his second year of becoming, I believe, lpcc. He shared a story of, like John Wayne and how, you know one of the films, he gets shot by these, you know, these arrows. Instead of pulling him out because he doesn't know what damage it's going to cause, he just breaks him off at the arrow and leaves the arrow in. They heal over and then a few years later he walks into a saloon and hits his shoulder on the door, you know, and is like, wow, oh, that really hurt, remembering that arrow was there and that's very similar to our pain points in life. And after he shared that, I realized that working with the teens, I'm like, oh, I'm like there's still something there for me. But instead of, I think, reacting or being critical of myself, they allow me that space to like sit with that and I think, within that space of sitting with that and expressing it with them and processing with the kids, the teens, it also invites them to share more. It invites them to open up more about their experiences.
Speaker 1:I it's got it. It's. It's so hard, it's got to be so hard to be a teenager these days, and I know that's how my parents thought when I was growing up. They were like, oh God, that's not how that was back in my day. And now I literally have that feeling in me when they say or do something They'll be talking about, like websites that they're on, or like apps or things that kids said or did, or like tied pod challenge and that kind of stuff, and I'm just like what? And it's just got to be so hard. And so I think that ability for them to allow me into that space and into their world and their experiences. I'm just grateful for that because it gives me more insight and I'm able to truly like meet them where they're at. Yeah, this world is a beautiful beautiful and also can be a very sad place.
Speaker 2:It can. There's, you know, I always say there's three primary emotions joy, fear and sadness. And people say, yeah, well, we always use anger, and one of the things I've learned is that anger can exist, much like purple can exist, without red and blue. Anger can't exist without fear and sadness.
Speaker 2:So when you say that it is a very sad and scary place at times and a lot of it's fine and it's also moving much faster. And I said this to someone the other day, I was actually talking to an amazing young boxer influencer who I've had the honor to do some coaching with and I said you know, you now have access to the world. When somebody was writing a book or writing in a newspaper or even on the radio, you reached a few people and, relatively so, the minute that you speak, the minute that you do something, you have access to the world. That's never happened. We've never had access to this.
Speaker 1:Never, never, have it. Ashlyn Kutcher was actually just on an interview where he was talking about you know, from the 70s show and talking about how him and, like you know, mila and all of them would go out at night and they would never have to worry about phones recording them or pictures being taken or filming or paparazzi or really you know anything like that. Now he's like I can't imagine being an artist or you know someone you know within, you know music or film. Now, like you can't live a private life, but that's true for everyone. Now you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:And your value, unfortunately, is based on that how many, how many likes, how many notices, how many you know of anything, as opposed to the kids, the kids.
Speaker 1:When I tell them they're like you know, after my two years are up, I'm going to follow you on Instagram or, you know, facebook or TikTok or whatever. I'm like I don't, I don't have any of those and they're fit. You could see it in their face. You're just like what? You don't have those. I'm like no, I'm like I gave up Instagram.
Speaker 1:Instagram was probably the last one that I gave up and that was like maybe five months ago, and that's part of it is that, like I realized how you said, you know, our world is so sped up that we can't be intentional, we can't be humans being, because we're just always going on to the next thing and I have to constantly remind myself of that is just that slowing down, that my value is not within how other people see me. It's within those principles that you were talking about, like what is my moral compass, what are my values? And that's kind of like you know how people talk about, like the legacy that they leave behind, which is, you know, to a certain extent, very ego driven. But it's like I just want people to remember me as being a kind decent human being at the end of the day and just being slow and mindful. I think people's qualities of life will be so enhanced by just taking a breath and just slowing down, being more intentional in connection with nature and people around them.
Speaker 2:It's funny. You said that about how people will remember you and I'm thinking how Jed Jed's going to remember me and Goliath Jed's the donkey, as you know.
Speaker 1:I was just reading this weekend.
Speaker 2:Right, he's in my front yard up at the Wellesmore.
Speaker 1:Oh my.
Speaker 2:God, you know these animals also remember. They remember that gray-haired lady. She's to come in. She always knew how to scratch us. It's the world right, remember. I mean, I know that tree. We now know trees have a whole communication system under the ground. Wouldn't it be nice too that the trees would go. Oh, my God, remember that old gray-haired lady and she'd come out and, you know, water us and make sure we were taken care of.
Speaker 1:And even speaking to, that is like the aspect of community. You know the caring right, the principles of L&T, you know leaving something better than when you found it right, and that is attributed to like wilderness, but it also, I think, can be attributed to our communities and society. But you know, I think you maybe have read the Secret Life of Trees.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have, and what blew my mind was two things in that book was that there's one tree in Africa I'm blanking on the name of it but it actually will expel an oil. If a giraffe comes over and starts, you know, nibbling on the leaves, but not only that tree but the trees in yards and the circumference of that tree will also start expelling that oil, and it's bitter. So the giraffes have to, like, migrate to another set of trees or shrubs or you know, whatever they're at their disposal. But the communication of that underground fungal root system and then the other one, that really blew my mind that I think MVP does an amazing job about this. I know higher ground is trying to do a better job about this. I think it's something that society could benefit from, but it's just more community and it was this aspect of this.
Speaker 1:There's a 500 year old tree in Ireland I think it was in Ireland had been cut down and some of the scientists that were on this hike you know, one of them stubbed themselves on it realized that the trunk was still alive. But this tree from like the rings and stuff, it had been cut down decades before and fallen over decades before. The trees around it were still keeping the trunk of it alive and I was just like oh wow, like how amazing and beautiful and utopian what our society looked like if that was how we operated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this idea that now that when I was talking to this young man yesterday about if you have access to the world, could you still see that as your community. Now, right, could we say, oh, wait a minute. He actually said to me on the colleagues he goes, susie, I care more about the world now, like I first was trying to be rich and famous and all that stuff. And he said now I care about the world, like healing and growing allows you to grow and open up the aperture of your caring, of your heart to include the whole world. So what if we social media to help provide more connection, as opposed to more likes for just you? What if it was? I always said that there should be a someone elsey instead of a selfie, so as someone elsey is a picture of someone else that you put on your Instagram and you will honor that other person.
Speaker 2:I like that. I like that, well, the someone elsey. And so you know, I put on my Instagram not pictures about me, not selfies, someone elsey who I admire, right, who I care about, or who's doing great work somewhere, whatever, and I thought you know we could change. So, instead of just saying social media is hurtful, which it can be Also helpful, so that we actually started to see the world more as one community as opposed to others 100%.
Speaker 1:And I wonder and this probably be a longer conversation for us, but it's like you know, we have some of these inventions that are meant to serve us, improve our quality of life, but then, at the end of the day, most of them end up somehow being a detriment. And I wonder how. One, how that happens. And two, like how that switch can happen, like how can that switch within our society? Because, as you know, sometimes those things that are ingrained take time to transition. So what would that look like? I think that would be something beautiful. To start doing is like start taking pictures of people on what was the name for it? Again, someone elsey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, instead of a selfie, it's a someone elsey, I like that. Yeah, I just thinking because there's a way then to move away from social media and there's a way to utilize it in a way that could be helpful. You know, when Logan, my grandson, had leukemia twice, of course I always tell that story and say you got it twice because he comes from a family of overachievers.
Speaker 2:So he had to do it twice because that's what we do, and he was on my podcast a couple of weeks ago, which was amazing to hear him, and I hear him every day to hear him and do that, and that idea that the social media helped us stay together with family. So I wasn't writing letters, I wasn't you know. I mean, we could literally connect with people 3000 miles away about what was going on for him, and so it's how you use something that is so important.
Speaker 2:And when this young man said to me yesterday I care about the world. And if he's an influencer, then it begs the question how are you going to influence? And there we go again. I am the fluent the yes to influence within Right, that's the first thing. You have to take what's important to you and give it out to the world, to tell brothers.
Speaker 1:I'm curious what was this? What was the switch friend? Did he allude to one specific thing?
Speaker 2:that kind of yeah, it's this healing of his own trauma, like going able to go in and take a look at exactly how we started. This conversation is most of what you think about yourself and feel about yourself is either done to you or told you. If you don't know what happened to you, you can't say well, that's just the way I am. Well, first of all, unless you, you know, actually was an incubator.
Speaker 1:You know if you're in a peak. That's an easy, that's an easy, that's an easy cop out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am. I was like no, that's what happened to you. It's not what's wrong with you, it's what happened to you. And this young man just pulled everything out of there. I was joking. Say if you kind of clean out a garage, do it the way my daughter does every time. Yeah, because Kirsten's the organizer.
Speaker 1:She takes everything out of the car. Oh no, I've seen it. I've seen it.
Speaker 2:I remember she used to clean the shed. She would take, she would just rearrange it, she would take it all out and then decide if something goes back in or not.
Speaker 1:But that's the detailed part aspect of it. That you were saying is that you have to be intentional. You can't just, you know, for like a better term half-asset. You know you have to be intentional with those things. And then when you aren't intentional and there are maybe ramifications or reactions, it's like having that bandwidth to be able to turn inward and be like, oh okay, I could have. I could have maybe been better in that moment or responded better.
Speaker 2:That's what my dad did. So I said I'd never be like my dad. And yet I'm doing exactly what was done to me, because we're all at risk of doing to ourselves and others what was done to us and we'll say, well, like you know, no, I will never do that. Yeah, you will If you're not careful, if you're not intentional. Right, the attention within is intentional. Everything starts from within. And then you can say no, that's the way I choose to be. You can't say that if you can't say no, this is what I choose to be.
Speaker 2:Because I've taken it out of the garage, I've looked at it, it works, I like it and it's effective, and I'm going to put it back in. I used to say to the veterans all the time if you were getting ready to go on a mission and I handed you a rucksack which of course, we know is supposed to carry everything you need in order to survive and thrive and help your team on a mission, half of it was filled with shit that didn't work, wasn't yours to begin with, didn't fit the mission. What would you do if I was the CEO and they go? We'd wait for you to turn your back and we would dump that shit out. And then we would put everything we need in order to survive.
Speaker 2:I go well, that's your childhood, that's your past, that's your past. Rucksack, and then choose what you want to put in there in order to be the person you deserve to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, it's like the things that you're holding on to and the weight that you carry Like do you really want to carry?
Speaker 2:that and that intentionality. So go full circle, because we're just about done this idea. That one of the things I absolutely admire about you. I appreciate it. It adds to the safety of who you are Like people don't talk about safe people enough that we're safe physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and financially. That we're literally safe people is that are creating the man that you deserve to be and the life you deserve to be. We're not waiting for someone else to do that for you.
Speaker 2:You are taking full responsibility, and that's what you do, which makes you so safe, makes you funny too, makes you handsome, makes you a lot of things. The thing it makes you is I don't know about funny. Oh, you're funny.
Speaker 1:I mean, I do giggle at myself, though it'll be random moments where I'll just giggle to myself and they're like you just said something funny in your head, huh, and I'm like yeah, You'll start to say it out more now.
Speaker 2:That's like that will happen.
Speaker 1:No, I appreciate that. I think you know again that comes from how you alluded to with working with other people is that you know that?
Speaker 1:wasn't presented for you.
Speaker 1:You have to present that for yourself and then, I think, like you said, in turn, and then other people start to notice that and feel that and I think that that safety and honesty is something that I've always wanted in my life and didn't really necessarily have growing up and through my, my 20s, and to be able to come into like my authentic self, especially at such a like later, later age.
Speaker 1:You know it's a beautiful thing. You know, I've had the. I am, you know, transgender, as you know, and so I think what's beautiful on that is getting to meet some of these younger folks that you know do identify as transgender, maybe even not Just their openness, openness and willingness to see that, to see me for who I am, and then it also lends to just having that connectedness. We've had a few transgender teens come through and as soon as we're able to kind of connect on that level, it's just a difference. So I see you, like I see you, and it's a beautiful experience. But yeah, I just I've always wanted that safety and I want to lend that safety to other people, I think. Hence why I'm going into the field and the fields that I have been in before this and I thank you for saying that that that means a lot that what I'm trying to put out in the world is is is seen from others.
Speaker 2:And I'll end with this Before I kick the bucket. I do have a list that I give to my daughter every day. It says things to do when I croak, and so I'm going to tell you one of the things I'd like to do before I croak is I would be honored to work with you in this field, and in any way I can help you gain that experience, those hours that you must get and all those that I would love that.
Speaker 1:I would love to have those hours, all the hours of you now.
Speaker 2:So I know how to do that and navigate that, and now I'm old enough, wise enough, experienced enough to be able to help you do that, and I would be absolutely honored. You are a blessing. I can't even tell you how thrilled I am. I'm still sweating. I'm still excited that you are here, and isn't that wonderful that we still have that kind of I would call it this kind of hope and encouragement that there are people in another generation coming, like yourself. That's going to make sure that when I am croaked, that there's. I can always think there's you, there's Kyrsha, there's my grandson, there's all those kids in those treatment centers that are there learning about how great they are, that there's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate you. I appreciate you. It started with those seeds that you planted. You planted many for me and I would also be equally honored and very full to work with you. I definitely see you as one of my mentors, so I'm excited for what's to come.
Speaker 2:And I just appreciate it this time the next chapter. And as you transition and keep changing into your authentic self. I just want you to know that I'm now two inches shorter than I was when I was in my 20s, so I'm also transitioning downward.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that I feel like I've maybe lost an inch too, so I feel like I might be ahead of you.
Speaker 2:All right, myania, we'll talk to you again soon. I'll see you soon. Bless you. You're doing crazy well.
Speaker 1:Bless you.
Speaker 2:And, by the way you'll know, the theme song was written by Calvin Love, so you should listen to it when we post this on Monday and it's called Be your Best Self, and he let me listen to it for free. He just said take it, lucy, utilize it, and he's a.
Speaker 1:Is it on Spotify?
Speaker 2:Everywhere. Just look out Calvin Love with a K and wonderful musician and songwriter. And yeah, look it up and be your best self.
Speaker 1:I am. I'm going to go walk and get a coffee and listen to it.
Speaker 2:All right, well, look Too bad you didn't have someone to deliver it to you.
Speaker 1:I know I need him, I know I need he. Still hasn't gotten here. All right, all right, cz Take care.
Speaker 2:Bye, I love you, love you Chris.
Speaker 1:Love you.